


Root of Nirn

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Tall She Was and Golden-Skinned [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Bonding, Compare and Contrast, Crossover, Dragon Age Quest: All New Faded for Her, Gen, Inquisitor Backstory, Nirnroot, POV Cassandra Pentaghast, POV Solas, Solas is Fen'Harel, Some Humor, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 07:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12384030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A very first snippet of Inquisitor Airanarie from Tamriel, and her budding unexpected friendship with Solas and Wisdom.





	Root of Nirn

‘Are you certain about this?’ Cassandra asks, her gaze darting back and forth from Solas, who is squatting inside the cell, the light of the guards’ torches making the prison bars’ shadows frame his face in two bold back stripes, and to the captured… being that lies on the makeshift bedding next to him, back curved like a huddled-up child’s.  
  
Were the prisoner human or elven or dwarven, Cassandra may even have pitied her (at least, she thinks it is a her? could be a them?) - curled up like this on a bundle of rags, still plunged into feverish sleep, fingers and ear tips twitching. But that is just the problem - this is not a human or elf or dwarf.  
  
This odd stranger, who has just stumbled, completely without warning, out of a spitting rift amidst the smouldering ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, silhouetted in stark black against the glowing green cloud that, as some have noted, was shaped somewhat like a woman - they are… she is… She is quite unlike any person Cassandra has encountered before, on this side of the Veil at least. With pointed, leaf-like ears that would suggest an elven heritage, and yet a stature as tall as a Qunari’s - but, apparently, still not one of those northern heathens, as Varric has seen plenty of that race’s males in Kirkwall, and Solas has seen reflections of all manner of its genders in his explorations of the Fade, and both are reasonably certain that the Qunari usually do not look quite like this. For the prisoner has unnaturally sharp cheekbones and elongated chin, semi-circular ridges jutting just above her eyes (a very distinctive feature that, as Solas has remarked, could theoretically be the stubs of Qunari horns, but again, does not look quite like it), and such a skin colour as though she has covered herself in gold paint (a decadent practice Cassandra associates with Tevinter orgies… Not that she has ever dwelled on those, Maker forbid!) - and yet, apparently, that’s no paint at all, but the stranger’s natural complexion.  
  
And then, yes, there is the matter of her eyes, too: she had them open for a few moments before sinking senseless on the ground; kept glancing wildly about her, wheezing something hoarsely in a language no-one could understand. Cassandra caught her wandering, unfocused gaze once or twice, and was left without shadow of a doubt: hers are not the eyes of any human or elf. Their whites (if they can even be called that) are yellow as the peel of the ripest sun-kissed Antivan lemons, and the irises, before her gaze dimmed and her lids slid shut, would flare like polished copper.  
  
A bright reddish-orange flame like this could mean… demonic nature - and what could be more logical than yet another demon leaping out of a tear in the Veil? It mattered not if it wore the sleek gold skin of a tall, maybe even slightly lanky, angular-featured woman with shortly cropped white hair, rather than the scaly hide of a snarling monster?  
  
Nine good Andrastians out of ten would have reasoned that the best course of action would be to cut the stranger down then and there, just to be on the safe side - indeed, Cassandra even raised her blade over her… but then something stirred within her chest, some gnawing worm of a doubt, and she backtracked a pace, ordering the Inquisition agents to take the stranger into custody instead. Further tests, run intermittently by Solas and Cullen, did not reveal any demonic presence; it seems that the (so far) helpless, delirious woman that is tossing and turning at Cassandra’s feet is a person, after all. But that is all they know about her - and so Cassandra is not at all enthused by what Solas is proposing.  
  
'Are you certain about this?’ she repeats, her sword arm growing instinctively tenser. 'She may not be… a demon right now - but what if you end up getting her possessed, turning her into an abomination? Or what if she is a maleficar of some sort, her appearance warped by her own forbidden magic - and visiting her dreams corrupts you? I cannot have either!’  
  
Solas quirks an eyebrow and allows himself a tiny sneer.  
  
'Your concern for me is very touching indeed, Seeker,’ he says dryly. 'But rest assured: what I am planning to do is nowhere near a forced demonic possession. I merely wish to call upon a spirit that I know so that it can teach our guest here at least some of the Thedosian Trade Tongue, which she clearly does not speak. This will make the interrogation - which you are doubtlessly looking forward to - far more expedient. Rather than us poking at this woman and running tests on her, she will be able to tell us all about herself in her own words. And as for corruption… sadly, my spirit friend will indeed risk that, as mortal minds - our minds - can easily break and twist pure Fade beings by the confines of their imperfection. But I shall do my best to safeguard it against such danger’.  
  
'Very well,’ Cassandra resigns, her sword arm far from relaxing. 'You have half an hour’.  
  
'More than enough; time passes differently in the Fade, after all,’ Solas smirks confidently and, edging closer to the wall, shifts his lower body a little, so that he is now sitting cross-legged; then, he closes his eyes and plunges into meditation.  
  
It takes him a certain while before he can establish a bond with Wisdom: like so many other peaceful, benevolent spirits, it has been driven away from the agony and turmoil that is the Breach. But Solas does not relent, focusing all of his willpower on bringing Wisdom out of hiding. There is just too much at stake here; too much weighs upon his ability to get through to this strange woman, to find out where she comes from, so tall and gold-skinned and fiery-eyed. Some of the ones he locked away could have…  
  
  
But no, she does not give off the same feeling; she is more like Cassandra and the others, half-Tranquil, severed from her true essence - maybe she is of the modern so-called elvenkind, after all, one of those Dalish tribes that evolved in isolation beyond all recognition… and apparently had enough sense not to preserve the degrading tradition of slave markings? He does not know; he does not know - and yet he must know. He must understand her identity, must ensure her cooperation; she has been Marked now, she ought to have a sliver of power to shape the Veil - and that power must be used in a proper way. Before all is lost.  
  
Pacing across the corner of the Fade where he has landed, with the crumbles of floating rock slipping conveniently under the soles of his feet as he treads among the tufts of green clouds, Solas calls and calls to Wisdom - and finally, it arrives, wearing its favorite form, that of a ghostly woman in a mage’s robe. Sensing the urgency of its friend’s pleas for help, it glides up to him and, exchanging a brief nod, follows him to where the prisoner is wandering, stumbling over the jutting sharp rocks that keep sprouting up around her, still mumbling to herself in that tongue that Solas has never heard spoken, among a single nation of these Tranquil-like people.  
  
At the first sight of this awkward gangly figure, Wisdom’s aura lights up with curiosity. When the soft green-gold glow reaches the prisoner, she looks up - and as her eyes, still wild and widened beneath the confused, bracket-like lines of her eyebrows, meet the spirit’s, her surroundings change. Reflecting the tangled ball of threads that fill up the stranger’s mind, Wisdom creates wondrous visions in the place of black and emerald rocks and acidic clouds. Solas sees a starry dome soar up above his and the prisoner’s heads, glimmering with constellations he has never seen; glowing white lines slither and dance around, linking the twinkling dots together in outlines of mythical figures: a broad-shouldered warrior with a massive two-handed axe, a thief in a billowing cloak, carrying a dagger and a pouch of stolen gold, a mage and his apprentice, a coiling serpent, a gigantic eye, a golem-like creature made out of hovering rocks, a racing steed. And beneath these new stars, a ghostly likeness of a landmass takes shape - like a scaled map suspended in mid-air right in front of Solas, with three-dimensional mountain ranges rising above it and river beds burrowing through. He sees continents and islands that do not resemble anything he knows of Thedas - a completely new, completely different world. Which has to mean that this stranger, this golden elf who is watching her own knowledge being given visible form with a look of breathless amazement, all her previous fear and confusion forgotten in the face of scholarly exploration… She is not from here at all; she has been somehow pulled in from another dimension - perhaps caught in the far-reaching ripples of the Breach.  
  
This is… this is better than any other possible explanation Solas could have come up with! Even if he forgets, for a moment, the exciting study potential presented by the existence of a different plane of reality, all of this means that the golden stranger will understand him - she will know what it is like, to be trapped in an alien land where everything is so warped and wrong. In time, she may even deserve being told the truth, for she is an outsider here, just as he is; she is not attached enough to Thedas to try and thwart his plans. If anything, she might be willing to help him, for - to imagine her own possible reasoning - what if the dissolution of the Veil, the return of Elvhen magic will bring her closer to home…  
  
Of course, the reality is that she is still mortal, and like all mortals, she will likely be claimed by the raw chaos that will consume Thedas (not this raw chaos, wrought by a deranged would-be god; the cleansing chaos that will set the world right). But, well, the Dread Wolf is a trickster for a reason, isn’t he?  
  
First order of business, however. No negotiations can be had if neither of them understands the other.  
  
After another nod passes between Solas and Wisdom, the spirit hovers closer to the awestruck stranger and, cautiously reaching forward, touches her forehead. The stranger gasps - and, as her pupils fill out her entire eyes, Solas sees tiny bright-green symbols rushing through them, flickering rapidly and shaping syllables, words, sentences… The entirety of the Trade Tongue’s vocabulary and grammar getting packed into the stranger’s mind in a matter of seconds.  
  
When the symbols fade, the stranger staggers back, slightly out of breath, with her hands on her temples - but looking very exhilarated. A broad-minded mortal, then; that is also reassuring.  
  
'This… This is amazing… I now suddenly know a whole language I was not even aware existed! And that’s - that’s a map of Nirn, isn’t it?’ she says, her speech slow as she rolls the unfamiliar words around her tongue. 'I am certain that the College of Winterhold will… Wait…’  
  
Her gaze darkens, and the corners of her lips are pulled downwards.  
  
'I still do not remember how got here from Winterhold. Wherever here is… A pocket dimension of Oblivion? A part of Apocrypha? If you…’  
  
She narrows her eyes and braces herself for something - which turns out to be making a joke… that Solas does not quite grasp the punchline of (her wording even… alarms him).  
  
'If you are Hermaeus Mora, you have certainly chosen a pretty disguise! Ha… haha. I am sorry; this is not too funny, is it? I am afraid that I may have gotten rusty with my people skills; I have been living out in a cabin in the woods for thirty years or so. And you probably shouldn’t jest in the presence of a Daedra Lord… or his servant…’  
  
Her expression grows even more disheartened - and then fearful.  
  
'Wait, maybe you are Haskill? I think Haskill appears as a Breton? Oh dear. I… I do not think I was quite… quite ready to go mad’.  
  
'You are not mad,’ Solas explains patiently, choosing to disregard all those… odd words she has been calling him. 'You have simply been displaced. The magic of the Breach that you stepped out of has carried you beyond the boundaries of dimensions, to a world apart from your… how did you call it? Nirn?’  
  
'Nirn,’ the stranger affirms - and Wisdom echoes it after her curiously, while ethereal green plants, with clusters of long, sharp leaves with jagged edges and sparkles hovering around them, sprout at the golden woman’s feet.  
  
'Oh, yes,’ she chuckles, noticing the ghostly flora and evidently deciding to give her 'people skills’ another try.  
  
'That’s Nirnroot - a plant synonymous with our… our world. It emits a tingly aura that makes it hard not to pick it. I think that wandering adventurers have turned it into a bit of a running joke’.  
  
  
  
And so, this is what culminates the first encounter between Airanarie, a confused and displaced Altmer, and that bizarre place where the souls of this new realm’s denizens travel to dream - and also, the spirit of Wisdom, which will often be there during her future explorations of the Fade with Solas, to share its knowledge of Thedas’ lore, to weave new visions of the places in Tamriel - and to laugh softly at the tingle of the nebulous Nirnroot stalks that will always spring up around Airanarie whenever she approaches. Until… Until there comes a day when Wisdom is no more, when Wisdom perishes, ripped out of the Fade against its will, commanded by bumbling, terrified mages to attack a group of bandits and irreparably broken by their ritual, mutilated and pushed to demonic insanity.  
  
On that day, Solas and Airanarie, the two strangers discovering Thedas (and coming to love it, with eager sincerity in the case of the latter, and half-apprehensive disbelief in the case of the former), will delve into the Fade together; together, they will find the usual place where Wisdom would meet them, and kneel on the flat, barren green rock, their arms wrapped against one another’s backs - a gesture of intimate trust and comfort that, under different circumstances, the Dread Wolf would never have allowed himself to exchange, even with a fellow passing stranger. Together, they will sit there in silence, watching one last, farewell image of their spirit companion manifest itself before them. One final wisp of greenish light, moulding into the shape of a Nirnroot, and then melting away.


End file.
